Monday, August 07, 2000
Mutiny ruined Snowden's run
Probation chief quit when he lost judges' support
By Dan Horn
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Ed Tullius, a veteran probation officer, led the revolt against Michael Snowden.
(Jeff Swinger photo)
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The judges knew something was wrong as soon as they saw the crowd.
No one ever showed up for their boring administrative meetings. But this June day, the judges spotted Probation Officer Ed Tullius and a dozen co-workers waiting in the hall to complain about their boss, Chief Probation Officer Michael Snowden.
Mr. Tullius was a respected, career officer who had learned how to navigate the tricky political landscape of Hamilton County's probation department, which monitors hundreds of convicted felons each year.
Mr. Snowden was the former Cincinnati police chief, a hard-nosed outsider hired by the judges to fix a department they deemed disorganized and inefficient.
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The two men had clashed privately for more than a year before bringing their fight to the judges' door. But after that June 29 meeting, their conflict entangled every judge and probation officer at the courthouse.
Now, six weeks later, Mr. Snowden is out of a job, Mr. Tullius is accused of leading a probation department mutiny and taxpayers are stuck with a $600,000 study that may now be ignored.
Some judges say the failed overhaul of the probation department is an “embarrassment.”
“That would be the only word for it,” says Common Pleas Judge Deidre Hair.
The question hanging over this political free-for-all is why the judges hired a reformer, let him launch an expensive overhaul and then turned against him.
The answer is a mix of politics and paranoia, miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Judges asked for changes but bristled when those changes affected them. Probation officers saw new expectations as a threat. And the man brought in to fix the department failed to convince his own staff it was broken.
“I'm sorry things worked out this way,” Mr. Snowden said.
Interviews with judges, probation officers and county officials make it clear the trouble started some 18 months ago, the day Mr. Snowden introduced himself to Mr. Tullius and the staff.
The judges who hired Mr. Snowden warned him he might not be welcomed with open arms. There are problems over there, they said. Organizational. Political. You name it.
They told him too many officers spent too much time milling around courtrooms when they should be out keeping tabs on convicted felons who have been placed on probation.
The judges oversee the department. They wanted to find out how the officers could be more efficient. They wanted stronger management. They wanted to put an end to complaints from some employees about favoritism.
They decided the recently retired police chief, a man used to working with strict rules, was the right man for the job.
“It won't be easy,” one judge cautioned. “Are you sure you want to get involved with this?”
“I'm looking forward to the challenge,” Mr. Snowden answered.
So when he introduced himself to his 220 employees last year, Mr. Snowden told them he had a mandate from the judges to scrutinize every aspect of their jobs. He said he had a “free hand” to make big changes.
As he spoke, he could see familiar faces in the crowd. A judge's wife, a sheriff's daughter, a niece or nephew of some bureaucrat. He had heard about nepotism in county government, about the connections between his staff and elected officials. And he made it clear it would not influence him.
“The way to get ahead is not based on who you know,” he told his staff. “It's based on how you do your job.”
To Mr. Tullius and some co-workers, the speech was an insult. Here was their new boss degrading them before he knew anything about them. He assumed they didn't deserve their jobs if they happened to know a big wheel at the county.
When he talked about throwing out the old system, they took it personally. They had been a part of that system for a long time.
“That caused a great deal of anxiety,” Mr. Tullius recalled. “He initiated that attitude right at the outset.”
What's more, he said, Mr. Snowden didn't seem interested in learning how probation officers did their jobs. With his “my way or no way” approach, he seemed intent on modeling the department after the city's five police districts.
A few days later, a friend stopped by Mr. Tullius' desk. “Welcome to District 6,” he said.
Snowden saw chaos
As far as Mr. Snowden was concerned, the place could learn a few things from the Police Division.
Every time he set foot in his new office, he saw chaos. No time clocks for officers in common pleas court, no morning meetings, not nearly enough accountability.
He asked how many people violate their probation and no one could give him a total. He asked how many people were on his staff and no one had a number.
“I was surprised by the lack of management,” Mr. Snowden said. “I was used to having that information available.”
As a 32-year police veteran, he was accustomed to a world of rigid discipline and top-down management. Daily reports. Unquestioned orders. That was the police way, his way.
But in the probation department, no one knew the answers to his questions.
So he started making changes.
He ordered all officers to report for morning meetings. He told them to put notes and reports into a computer so everyone would have access to them. And he commissioned a $600,000 study on the efficiency of the department.
“My marching orders were simple: "Go run the place,'” Mr. Snowden said. “That's what I did.”
Mr. Tullius worried his new boss might run it into the ground. He knew the system wasn't perfect, but he also knew it might never work the way Mr. Snowden wanted it to.
Unlike the Police Division, the world of probation was a fluid, flexible place. A world that revolved around the personalities and peculiarities of Hamilton County's 30 municipal and common pleas judges.
Every judge had his or her own system, and it was the officer's job to work within that system. They were the bosses. Even Mr. Snowden answered to them.
So when Mr. Tullius heard Mr. Snowden talk about change, what he heard was: “It's the chief's way or the judges' way.”
Mr. Tullius had worked in probation for 13 years. He knew the judges.
He was sure some of them weren't going to like delegating so much of their authority to Mr. Snowden.
Working for 30 bosses
Mr. Snowden was a little surprised when he started getting phone calls a few months into the job. Nothing major at first. Sometimes it was a hiring recommendation, and sometimes it was a minor complaint or suggestion.
But he began to understand what it meant to work for 30 bosses.
“In the Police Division, I had more authority,” Mr. Snowden said.
Even simple things, like a standardized form for probation violations, became an issue. Mr. Snowden thought it made sense to have the same form for every courtroom.
But then he got a call from a judge complaining about his name appearing at the bottom of the form. “I want it at the top,” the judge said.
Mr. Snowden wasn't used to this. And he wasn't used to a staff that questioned his orders.
Mr. Tullius asked more questions than most. He wanted to know why his boss was moving so fast, making so many demands, setting up so many committees.
He saw fellow officers struggling to manage their caseloads — sometimes more than 100 probationers — while also trying to master the new computer system or the latest standardized report. Some didn't even know how to type.
As a computer trainer, Mr. Tullius saw his co-workers cracking under the pressure.
“I can't take it any more,” one officer told him, sobbing. “I can't do all this.”
Some staffers began comparing themselves to “guinea pigs.” They questioned why supervisors kept such close track of them. They wanted to know why their boss conducted background checks on them.
“How people felt didn't seem too important,” Mr. Tullius said.
To Mr. Snowden, this was standard operating procedure. He wanted to know how his employees spent their workday and whether they had criminal records or valid driver's licenses.
“It was a shock to them,” Mr. Snowden said of his management style. “I made a mistake there. I should have moved slower.”
But he was confident he was on the right track. The $600,000 study had confirmed many of his suspicions.
The study concluded that officers spent too much time in court or shuffling paperwork and not enough dealing with probationers. It claimed that with better organization, the department would save as much as $1.7 million a year.
Still, the staff was nervous. Many didn't consider those numbers reliable, and some thought the report would just embolden the chief to make their lives more miserable.
Their anxiety spawned wild rumors: The chief is having us followed. The chief put hidden cameras in the computers. The chief doesn't have a college degree.
Some officers began quietly complaining to judges. Some found sympathetic ears.
Defining "mandate'
After the officers marched into the judges' meeting last month, Mr. Snowden sensed that “mandate” may have been too strong a word to describe the judges' support.
The judges seemed to be choosing sides, with more than a few lining up against him.
Mr. Snowden didn't help matters when he made public comments about nepotism. He spent the last few weeks of July trying to smooth things over with infuriated judges, sometimes visiting all of them in a single afternoon.
“I was trying to get support one individual at a time,” he recalled. “It was a roller coaster. At 1 p.m. I'd have a lot of support and at 3 p.m. I'd have no support.”
Mr. Tullius didn't have much sympathy. He figured Mr. Snowden was now being held accountable in the same way he had held his staff accountable.
Accountability became an issue again last week when Judge Karla Grady suggested Mr. Snowden submit his college diplomas. She wanted to put to rest rumors about no degree.
Judge Robert Taylor, whose wife works in the department, went a step further. He wanted to see his transcripts, too.
For Mr. Snowden, that was the last straw. He copied his diplomas, stapled them to a resignation letter and delivered them to the courthouse.
“I suggest the next chief be an individual without the strong principles and leadership qualities I brought to the organization,” Mr. Snowden wrote. “In that way, you can keep the status quo.”
Mr. Tullius was relieved. “You can only see so many people cry at work before you have to do something,” Mr. Tullius said.
To far, too fast
The judges began looking for Mr. Snowden's replacement last week. Considering Mr. Snowden's fate, they aren't expecting a flood of applicants.
“I don't blame him for quitting,” says Common Pleas Judge Steven Martin, who supported the former chief.
For now, at least, most of the reforms outlined in the $600,000 study are on hold. Mr. Tullius, along with several judges, are happy about that.
Change is one thing, they say. But Mr. Snowden went too far, too fast.
Mr. Snowden says he did what he was hired to do. “There's a lot of good people over there,” he said. “I hope they pick up and move on, not back.”
Common Pleas Judge Robert Kraft says the judges will take their time hiring the next chief.
“I have no idea what we might come up with,” he said.
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